The show has suggested that Frank has a formidable match in Will Conway, but I wonder if Claire does too in Hannah. Her robo-call speech on gun control again demonstrated how her political ruthlessness can dovetail with her personal magnetism and sense for when and how to feign vulnerability.

She, of course, is helping that effort by taking an ever more visible role in the policy arena. Recommended: 'House of Cards' Season 4, Episode 1: The Live-Binge Review In Cards land, you can guess at why Frank pushed for chaos in the convention hall: He can manipulate it so that it seems like there’s an authentic groundswell for Claire to be his running mate. But the backroom dealing did give the chance the for the show’s creators to smirkily serve up another all-too-relevant exchange: “A Supreme Court confirmation in the middle of the election?” “Grow a pair.” The prospect of a brokered convention may also turn out to be prescient if the #NeverTrump crowd gets its way in real life. And it’s not clear to me why Cathy Durant wasn’t in the running from the start if she’s such an acceptable candidate to all involved. The Underwood’s machinations with a VP pick and a gun-control bill purposefully sunk by the NRA were, perhaps, not the easiest thing to follow. It also showed that dumb luck is sometimes essential to an investigation: Meechum’s image was on TV at the exact right moment.

But Hammerschmidt’s visit to her old block (DC folks, where do we think she lived? Petworth?) turned out to be pivotal because it confirmed that the journalist was onto something. I’m not sure what the point of the phone call with her DUI dad was other than to make her into an even more tragic figure in the afterlife and to remind us of one of the most gut-churning depictions of Father’s Day ever. Tom Hammerschmidt’s investigation has kicked off what feels like the beginning of House of Cards closing its own loop, circling back to people and sets we haven’t seen since 2013. It’s enough to make you miss the astringency of Zoe Barnes, whose ghost haunts this show more than ever. Recommended: How David Hume Helped Me Solve My Midlife Crisis Get ready for more shots of people looking out windows as Paul Sparks mumbles on about clouds and ghosts and sunsets as metaphors for whatever is happening in the plot. He, meanwhile, chooses not to sell out the Underwoods because he wants to find a new ending to his novel inspired by them. Both Frank and Claire have an inexplicable attraction to him, but they have the pretense of realpolitik reasons-blocking his book from coming out-to hire him as a speechwriter. No one was asking for the return of Tom Yates, a certified phony whose writing, one hopes, is meant only to be a parody of false depth and not the show’s attempt to offer the real thing.

House of cards season 4 episode 8